Today's gospel (Mark 8:22-26) is rather perplexing: it is the only miracle account in which the healing is not initially completely effective, and it is not immediately clear what we are supposed to make of this. In fact, some suggest that it is for this very reason that Matthew and Luke omit this event from their gospels. Read more

When Jesus speaks about persecutions in Luke 21:12-19 he is not speaking about the violence when Christians are attacked by external forces but rather the persecution that his apostles and early disciples, to whom he was speaking, would experience at the hands of those children of Israel who refused to accept his Gospel as truth or receive him as the Messiah. Read more

The accusations levelled at the pharisees by Jesus can just as easily be asked of us: are we sincere and faithful in following God’s commandments? Is our religious practice one which buffs up the outside of the cup, leaving the inside tainted and impure? Asking these questions of ourselves can ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes as the pharisees, but can also tell us something about how we are to speak the truth to others.
Read more

Are you an anarchist or a legalist? I suspect you’d want to reply, ‘neither’. But the reality is that most of us are at least inclined towards one or the other. Today’s Gospel appears to strike a blow for those with legalist tendencies, but of course it is no more an endorsement of legalism than ‘The truth will set you free’ is an endorsement of anarchy. As ever, the Catholic picture is much richer than a simple ‘either/or’.Read more

Seating plans can be a headache. We had one recently for our Doorkeepers’ Dinner. The trouble with seating plans is that if there is a logic underlying the arrangement of people, inevitably someone will feel overlooked whereas others who may have been preferred can feel embarrassed about the honour they have received to the exclusion of someone else. It usually ends in some sense of awkwardness. Incidentally, about six months ago I was at a friend’s birthday where a table plan was displayed with nice little name cards. My friend proudly announced that had placed people randomly, which seemed to me to defeat the point. I suspect that where he sat was not entirely random. Anyway, the point is that it matters to us as social creatures where we sit, and it was no different in Jesus’s day.Read more

At the Last Supper, Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and prayed, saying: “I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” These words of Jesus in today’s Gospel present a threefold puzzle to the modern world. Read more